AP PHOTOS: Digging Out: 'It's like lifting cement'

Neil Hodges uses a snow blower to clear drifting snow from in front of his home in Concord, N.H. on Saturday, Feb. 9, 2013. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)

"It's like lifting cement. They say it's 2 feet, but I think it's more like 3 feet," says landscaper Michael Levesque, who was shoveling snow in Quincy, Mass.

All throughout New England, residents began the grueling task of digging out from as much as 3 feet of snow Saturday. Emergency crews used snowmobiles to reach shivering motorists stranded overnight on New York's Long Island after a howling storm swept through the Northeast.

About 475,000 homes and businesses remain without power, down from a peak of about 650,000, and some could be cold and dark for days. There have been at least five storm-related deaths in the U.S.

Roads across the New York-to-Boston corridor of roughly 25 million people were impassable. Cars were entombed by drifts. Some people found the wet, heavy snow packed so high against their homes they couldn't get their doors open.